The first step is to survive the coordinated attacks from the children. An ex-nihilo stain suddenly appears on my daughter’s dress. An episode from my son responding to his sister’s “help.” A well-placed plastic Lego planted strategically at the bottom of the steps. And of course, a soiled-through diaper just as we head for the door.

Safely in the car, we prepare to play our part of our church’s ministry for that Sunday’s gathering. I have no formal duties this week — I am not preaching or welcoming or giving the prayer of thanksgiving — but I ready myself and my family for ministry nonetheless.

A worship song plays. Swerving along the main road cratered as the moon, we arrive at the chosen traffic light signaling time to pray for the service. The music pauses, and a hush falls on the car.

Father, please be with us as we worship you in spirit and in truth. Bless the pastor to preach your word with power. Give us ears to hear and obey your word. Have mercy on your beloved people. Let us see Christ. If any do not truly know you, save them. And Lord, prepare us now to be a blessing to your people.

After we park, we turn our energies to greeting the saints and getting all of our kids into the pew.

As the service begins, we focus on the lyrics being sung, asking God to warm our hearts and the hearts of those around us. My two oldest, imitating their parents, throw up their hands. We praise him with our whole person. Lord, accept our songs in your Son. Forgive our coldness and distractions.

As worship continues, my wife and I see some new faces, some faces we have not seen in a while, some faces we have been praying for. We note people we want to make sure to talk to after the service.

The preacher soon mounts the pulpit. O Lord, give him love for your glory, love for your people, love for your word. Bless him to preach as one speaking your oracles. Speak to us through this man.

After the preaching, after the final song and benediction are given, we look around — a big part of our ministry begins. Who would you have us speak with, encourage, welcome to the church, pray for, confront? How do you plan to use us to bless those around us in the pews this week?

Does My Church Need Me?

Here is the main point, the truth that can revolutionize your walk with the Lord and your experience of the local church: If you know and love the Lord Jesus Christ, you have something to contribute to your local church every Sunday morning.

Do you believe that? Do you come not only to receive — which you should — but to also bless?

“If you know and love the Lord Jesus Christ, you have something to contribute to your local church every Sunday morning.”

This has been hard for “normal” Christians to believe ever since the beginning. In the early church, members looked around the house churches in Corinth and saw different usefulness in the Lord, different giftings. Some seemed more essential, and others more dispensable.

Responding to such thinking, Paul writes, “The eye cannot say to the hand, ‘I have no need of you,’ nor again the head to the feet, ‘I have no need of you.’ On the contrary, the parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable. . .” (1 Corinthians 12:21–22).

Indispensable.

In too many churches today, the feet, hands, and ears say of themselves, “Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body” (1 Corinthians 12:16) — because we do not preach, teach, or host small group — we are not needed. Hands show up on Sundays, listless, merely to listen to the mouth speak. They rest in the audience, treating the local church as a theater that welcomes spectators to watch more prominent saints do actual ministry.

You are not leading worship. You are not formally greeting, nor praying in the service, nor giving communion. You aren’t ushering, or serving in the nursery, or leading a women’s ministry. What part do you really play? Everything, you think, would run just as smoothly without you.

I hope, normal Christian, that this liberates you from inactivity and relative anonymity on Sunday mornings: God has a vital part for you to play every time your local church gathers.

Ministry of the Pew

May I introduce you to what others have called the ministry of the pew? Ministry that you — normal Christian — perform every Lord’s day. Such is the ministry of the Not-Up-Fronts, the army sitting facing the pulpit.

“Some of the best ministry in healthy churches happens by those who never hold a microphone.”

For years I did not have any notion of this. I might bring people to church, to my pastor’s ministry. But over time I discovered that the pastor’s ministry does not replace mine; it refines mine. It makes our ministry better, more effective. Your pastor equips you for the work of ministry, for the building up the body of Christ into mature manhood (Ephesians 4:12–13). This ministry finds some expression on Sunday mornings as you serve, you prepare, and you exercise your own gifts and acts of love within your local body. Much of the best ministry in healthy churches happens by those who never hold a microphone.

So what can this ministry look like? The possibilities are endless, but here are a few principles to get you started.

1. Arrive Early, Stay Late

Consider how the author of Hebrews describes the alternative to not gathering together on Sundays:

Let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near. (Hebrews 10:24–25)

The opposite of neglecting to meet together is not just technically going to church — sneaking in the back and bolting at the last amen. Failing to meet entails not just a failure of proximity but a failure of encouragement. The writer assumes that meeting together will to lead to stirring each other up to love and good works. And not just the pastor stirring us up. You stirring me, and I stirring you. Or, in shorthand, we encourage one another as we see the Day draw near.

How can we do this if we avoid speaking with God’s people? How can we encourage one another if we come late and leave early? And consider creating space for after-service fellowship to carry over into lunch. It wasn’t too long ago when many churches considered the “Lord’s day” (Revelation 1:10) as the Lord’s day. All day. Time around the saints is imperative for pew ministry.

2. Pray for a Burden for Someone

But do not just stay and linger around the church water fountain.

Lookout for the member you have not talked much with. Lookout for the new face, caught mid-pew, no one to talk with. Pray for the Lord to give you a burden for someone in the congregation — and then take courage and go speak with them.

What if it is awkward? Consider your Savior. The Son of God took on human flesh, allowed it to be flogged, broken, tortured, as his soul drank down the bitterest parts of his Father’s wrath as he considered our interests above his own. We are to share his mind. Can we not risk going introduce ourselves to others, or missing part of that football game, to have a real conversation with someone?

One thing I’ve had to learn is to not avoid eye-contact with people for fear of a conversation. Love looks people in the eye and invites dialogue. Prepare for such conversations. Arrive with a verse to share with someone. Arrive with the intention to leave with one person’s prayer request. Do not leave until you have met someone new. A dear saint at our church bakes banana bread and hands out a loaf every Sunday to one new guest. Get creative.

3. Risk Having Real Conversations

Once you’ve started to talk with someone new or a member you don’t know well, or someone you know already but mean to encourage, take risks in conversation. Instead of only discussing afternoon plans, how the weather has been lately, whether they have been enjoying work, steer the conversation into deeper waters.

I find in most conversations the point comes when I wonder, Are we really going to talk? Will we take things deeper, closer to the heart?

Will we talk at all about the sermon? Will we share how we can be praying each other’s families? Will we speak at all about our glorious Christ? Or maybe we need to risk asking why we haven’t seen them around much recently.

A way I try and take steps away from the shallows is to answer questions more honestly myself. How am I doing? I can tell them pretty good and thank them for asking. Or I can confess that I have been tired and irritable with my kids lately. If applicable, how have they grown in patience over their time parenting?

In conversation, deep usually calls to deep. Share with discretion, but invite depth. Show more of your heart, your victories, your struggles. It often frees others to do the same. I have found it usually only takes someone to jump in first.

Bring Your Baked Beans

This vision of pew ministry, as brief as it is here, takes intentionality. Takes effort. Takes prayer. Takes risk and sacrificing the easier road of: come, sing, listen, leave. The rewards more than compensate. Some of my most precious friendships sailed through the slim channel of decision: Will I ask for the Lord’s help? Will I stick around? Will I go over and talk to him? Will I go deeper? I’ve found that on the other side has been an ocean never enjoyed by the unwilling.

If you are Christ’s, you have an indispensable role every gathering. Refuse to squeeze church in. Refuse to be anonymous. Refuse to bring nothing to this spiritual potluck simply because you are not bringing the main dish. Bring your baked beans, your Sicilian Brussel sprouts, your honey-lemon asparagus. You never know how God might use what you bring to satisfy or sustain or even save a soul this Sunday.

Audio Transcript

After one quarter of a century at Bethlehem Baptist Church, Pastor John looked back and reflected on one of the most troubling trends he followed in Christianity. It was the trend of self-esteem and self-love, big in the 1970s and 80s. Self-esteem was said to be the key to Christian love: love yourself more, and then you will be able to love others more effectively. But such a model was a distortion. Actually, what the Bible demands from Christians is far more radical than self-esteem. It’s more radical because the Bible does not call us to love ourselves more, but to love others with the same earnestness and zeal that we already love ourselves with. This more radical calling to love is such a high and demanding calling, Pastor John will come right out and call this revelation utterly “devastating” — devastating because it really renders Christianity to be “an impossible religion.” Here’s Pastor John, explaining in one of his 2005 sermons.

How is the debt of love we owe to others related to self-love? Romans 13:9 is a quotation of Leviticus 19:18. It’s quoted by Jesus; it’s quoted by James; it’s quoted by Paul. This is the royal law of love: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” My question is, What does “as you love yourself” mean — “as yourself”?

I’ve been here 25 years now. We just celebrated that on Wednesday night. I can remember in the six years before I got here being over at Bethel, and I would say among the dominant concerns of my life from 1974 to 1989 was this issue. What does “as yourself” mean? I point out that little historical fact just because either I’ve got my head in the sand, or things have changed a little bit. I don’t hear as much now as I did, thirty and twenty years ago, the psychological scheme that was built on this verse that was so wrong. But I’m going to tell you what it is just in case my head is in the sand, and just in case it’s got a hook in you. I’m going to try to get the hook out right now.

Gospel of Self-Esteem

For many years, Christians would write articles and books in which they said that this command meant that the reason people don’t love others is because they haven’t learned to love themselves enough, and therefore the task of counseling and the task of education and parenting and preaching is to help people love themselves more so that they would have resources to love other people. And in that little scheme, self-love always meant self-esteem.

So the universal gospel that fixes all problems of children and marriages and business conflict is lack of self-esteem, and therefore the task of all counselors, all preachers, all parents, all educators is to get more self-esteem into these little kids’ lives and into these employees’ lives, and then things will go better because as they love themselves, they will spill over on love to other people. That was the scheme, and it colossally missed the point in several ways.

First, this biblical commandment assumes that all of us love ourselves and don’t need to be taught at all to love ourselves. It is an assumption. Every person in this room without exception has a massive love affair with yourself. You don’t need to be taught at all.

And it has, secondly, nothing to do with self-esteem. Your love for yourself is very simply your desire to be happy and to do whatever it takes to make your life the way you want it. He’s not talking as if first you must learn to esteem yourself, and then out of that rich appreciation for your qualities, you now are free to love other people — which presumably, then, would mean to help them appreciate how wonderful they are.

Everybody Wants to Be Happy

That’s just not the way Paul was thinking. The words are not a command to love yourself; they are an assumption: love your neighbor as you already love yourself — no questions asked about it.

Here’s an example in Ephesians 5. Paul is talking about husbands and wives in Ephesians 5. He’s taking the command to love your neighbor and applying it to husbands and wives. So how does a husband love a wife in these terms? It goes like this: “Husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself.” Then he adds this amazingly crucial statement in verse 29: “For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church” (Ephesians 5:28–29). Nobody ever hated himself, but nourishes and cherishes himself. Everybody, without exception, loves himself — whatever his self-esteem is, high or low.

Everybody wants food to eat and will do almost anything to get it if we get hungry enough.
Everybody wants to drink and not die of thirst, and we will do almost anything to serve ourselves with drink if we get thirsty enough.
Everybody wants to avoid injury and death, and we will do whatever it takes not to walk in front of a train or a truck or drink poison or get ourselves killed in some other way.

We love life and our health big time. And if somebody raises the objection, “Well, what about masochists and suicide victims? Are they exceptions? I mean, they don’t treat themselves well, do they?” The answer is that masochists and suicide victims are not exceptions to this rule.

A masochist is a person who, for very sad and sick reasons, finds pleasure in hurting himself or pleasure in the tending of the doctors. I’ve talked to people who cut themselves. I asked one young woman that we were working with, “Why do you cut yourself?” She had big lacerations on her stomach. She said, “It’s the only time anybody ever touches me.” She wanted to be touched. She loved herself massively. “Touch me. Touch me, doctors.”

The same is true for suicide. The only reason people commit suicide is because life has gotten so painful, they can’t stand it anymore and they want to escape. They just want out of the pain, which is self-love. “I don’t want the pain anymore.”

“Everyone has self-love. Jesus does not command it; he assumes it.”

Everybody likes to be praised, and apart from grace, we all subtly say things and do things to be liked, to be praised. It takes a massive work of divine grace to free you from that idol. We love the praise of men. Everyone has self-love. Jesus does not command it; he assumes it.

Seek Others’ Good

Now, lots of people think it would be very radical if Jesus said, “So stop loving yourself like that, and start doing the duty of love to other people. Stop having those strong cravings for your own happiness and your own welfare. Stop that, kill that, crucify that, die to that, and start doing something that doesn’t flow from desires for your happiness and just do dutiful, loving things.” Some people would say that’s really radical, and it would be, I suppose.

But it’s not as radical as what Jesus says and Paul says and James says and Leviticus says. They say, “Love your neighbor that way: like you massively love yourself. Make your desire to be alive, make your desire for happiness the measure of your desire for other people’s happiness.” You talk about radical, you talk about life-changing, heart-exploding, impossible demands. Love your neighbor as you love yourself.

If you are energetic in pursuing your own happiness, be energetic in pursuing the happiness of your neighbor.
If you are creative in pursuing your own happiness, be creative in pursuing the happiness of your neighbor.
If you are persevering and enduring in pursuing your own happiness, be persevering and enduring in pursuing the happiness of your neighbor.

“Make the degree of your own self-seeking, which is very high, the measure of your seeking their good.”

Paul is not mainly saying to seek for your neighbor the same things that you want; he’s saying, “Seek their good in the same way you seek your own good. Make the degree of your own self-seeking, which is very high, the measure of your seeking their good.”

Radical, Impossible Command

This is devastating. You’re sitting at home. You’re just enjoying an evening. It feels good — watching television, watching a video, eating a good meal, talking. And you hear Jesus say, “Love your neighbor as you want this evening.” That’s just devastating. Measure your pursuit of the happiness of others by the pursuit of your own.

How do you pursue your well-being? Pursue their well-being that way.
Are you hungry? Find a hungry neighbor and feed him.
Are you thirsty? Give your thirsty neighbor a drink.
Are you lonely? Find someone who’s lonely and befriend them.
Are you frightened? Find someone to comfort.
You want to make a good grade on the next exam. So do others. Help them.

That is radical. It’s far more radical than saying, “Stop desiring and start doing duty.” It’s far more radical because it says, “Now, all these massive desires that I have for my happiness are not sent away; they are transposed into another kind of music. The same energy, the same longings, the same desires are now desires for you and your salvation and your happiness and your good, your stomach being full and your mind being educated and your life having significance. All the things I want, I now, with that same energy, want for you.”

Christianity is an impossible religion. This is a standard that is overwhelming, and it just makes me long to have a miracle done to me.

Pastor is a strange and difficult calling. It’s strange because, to use the biblical metaphor, a pastor is a sheep to whom the Great Shepherd has entrusted certain shepherding responsibilities within a particular “flock of God” (1 Peter 5:2) — he’s a shepherding sheep. And it’s difficult because, in addition to carrying out his demanding shepherding responsibilities, he himself needs to be led by the Great Shepherd as much any other Christian. Indeed, he is to set an example of following for his fellow sheep (1 Peter 5:3).

In other words, a pastor is a lead follower, which puts the emphasis of his calling in the right places. He’s first and foremost a follower of Jesus, the Great Shepherd, like any other sheep. Lead describes not his exalted status or unquestionable spiritual authority or superior value within the flock, but his sober calling to follow his Shepherd in such a way that his fellow sheep can “consider the outcome of [his] way of life, and imitate [his] faith,” to speak to them “the word of God,” and to keep watch over their souls, as one “who will have to give an account” (Hebrews 13:7, 17).

Call to Prayerful Dependence

If understood correctly, a pastor’s calling is designed to keep him in a posture of prayerful dependence, with his fellow flock members praying on his behalf. For who is adequate for such a calling — accountable to Jesus for how he models what it means to be a Christian, how rightly he handles the word of truth (2 Timothy 2:15), and how the souls under his care spiritually fare? A pastor’s calling should regularly send all the sheep to their knees, because how well a pastor leads hangs on how well he follows the Great Shepherd’s lead.

“How well a pastor leads hangs on how well he follows the Great Shepherd’s lead.”

To that end, the following are ten suggested ways pastors can pray to be led by Jesus, drawn from various psalms. And they can be easily adapted by church members as ways to pray for those who love them enough to serve as lead followers.

1. Following: Lead me as my shepherd.

The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.     He makes me lie down in green pastures.He leads me beside still waters.     He restores my soul.He leads me in paths of righteousness     for his name’s sake. (Psalm 23:1–3)

Great Shepherd, the flock I am a part of is your flock, and I am only an “overseer,” a lead follower, by the appointment of your Spirit (Acts 20:28). Therefore, I am all the more dependent on you to shepherd me, since apart from you I can do nothing (John 15:5). Help me keep looking to you for everything I need (Philippians 4:19) and seeking to serve your flock in the strength you supply (1 Peter 4:11). Lead me in paths of righteousness for your name’s sake.

2. Wisdom: Lead me in your understanding.

Give me understanding, that I may keep your law     and observe it with my whole heart.Lead me in the path of your commandments,     for I delight in it. (Psalm 119:34–35)

Great Shepherd, I believe that “the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom” and that “all those who practice it have a good understanding” (Psalm 111:10). This is why I delight in your word: it is the source of understanding for how I and my fellow sheep may “walk in a manner . . . fully pleasing to” you (Colossians 1:10). So give me understanding that I may wisely observe your commandments with my whole heart, because I love you (John 14:15).

3. Teaching: Lead me by your Spirit.

Teach me to do your will,     for you are my God!Let your good Spirit lead me     on level ground! (Psalm 143:10)

Great Shepherd, you’ve called me, as a lead follower, to teach my brothers and sisters (1 Timothy 3:2; Titus 1:9). Help me remember that I have nothing to teach them that I have not received from you through others by your Spirit (1 Corinthians 4:7). And help me remember that I am responsible to teach not merely through what I say, but through what I do by the power of your Spirit (James 1:22). So lead me by your good Spirit, and teach me to do your will.

4. Purity: Lead me in your righteousness.

Search me, O God, and know my heart!     Try me and know my thoughts!And see if there be any grievous way in me,     and lead me in the way everlasting! (Psalm 139:23–24)

Lead me, O Lord, in your righteousness. (Psalm 5:8)

“Great Shepherd, lead me in your righteousness — don’t let me try to lead with mine.”

Great Shepherd, apart from your sovereign keeping, I am as vulnerable to temptation and as prone to wander as any of my fellow sheep. And you know the state of my heart and my inmost thoughts more thoroughly than I do. Do whatever you must to reveal any grievous way in me so that my precious brothers and sisters “who hope in you” never have cause to “be put to shame through me” (Psalm 69:6). Help me lead by seeking to be a lead confessor, lead repenter, lead grace-recipient, and lead holiness-pursuer. Lead me in your righteousness — don’t let me try to lead with mine.

5. Guidance: Lead me in your truth.

Make me to know your ways, O Lord;     teach me your paths.Lead me in your truth and teach me,     for you are the God of my salvation;     for you I wait all the day long. (Psalm 25:4–5)

Great Shepherd, all your providential paths “are steadfast love and faithfulness” (Psalm 25:10). But as a lead follower, I often do not know the right path to take. I and this flock are utterly dependent upon you to lead us. Make me humble enough to remember that “in an abundance of counselors there is safety” (Proverbs 11:14), patient enough not to move until you grant sufficient clarity, and bold enough to lead in following you when your guidance becomes sufficiently clear. Lead me and my fellow sheep in your truth and teach us.

6. Courage: Lead me because of my enemies.

Teach me your way, O Lord,     and lead me on a level path     because of my enemies. (Psalm 27:11)

Great Shepherd, you displayed such wise and gracious courage in the face of your spiritual and human adversaries. Train me in cultivating such courage. Teach me to be “quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger” (James 1:19), to courageously seek the glory of the one who sent me, and not my own (John 7:18). Teach me to truly love my enemies and seek their good (Luke 6:27) while remaining courageous enough to speak the truth in love when it is unpopular and despised (Ephesians 4:15). Lead me on a level path because of my enemies.

7. Discouragement: Lead me with your light.

Send out your light and your truth;     let them lead me. (Psalm 43:3)

Great Shepherd, when I do succumb to discouragement because of the opposition of adversaries, criticism from my fellow sheep, sorrow from tragedies within my flock, difficulties within my family, my besetting weaknesses, or fatigue from long, strenuous labors, have mercy on me. Send out your light and your truth, and let them lead me to once again “take courage” (Psalm 27:14).

8. Protection: Lead me to your refuge.

You are my rock and my fortress;     and for your name’s sake you lead me and guide me. (Psalm 31:3)

Great Shepherd, you laid down your life for your sheep to deliver us from our greatest danger: your Father’s wrath (John 10:11; Romans 5:8–9). You told us we would experience tribulation in the world, but not to fear because you have overcome the world (John 16:33). And you promise to “rescue [us] from every evil deed and bring [us] safely into [your] heavenly kingdom” (2 Timothy 4:18). Protect me and my fellow sheep from the true danger of faithlessness. Protect me as a lead follower from discouraging others by fearing what man can do to me more than I fear the destruction of faithlessly shrinking back (Hebrews 10:39). You are my rock and fortress; when I am afraid, lead me to seek my only safe refuge in you.

9. Overwhelmed: Lead me when my heart is faint.

Hear my cry, O God,     listen to my prayer;from the end of the earth I call to you     when my heart is faint.Lead me to the rock     that is higher than I. (Psalm 61:1–2)

Great Shepherd, I take comfort that such a faith-filled, strong, courageous lead follower as David at times felt overwhelmed by his circumstances and became faint of heart. And I take comfort that you know my frame and remember that I am dust (Psalm 103:14). When I become overwhelmed, “lift me high upon a rock” (Psalm 27:5), above the fray, where I can rest and regain perspective. Lead me to the rock that is higher than I.

10. Spiritual Desertion: Lead me through my darkness.

Where shall I go from your Spirit?     Or where shall I flee from your presence?If I ascend to heaven, you are there!     If I make my bed in Sheol, you are there!If I take the wings of the morning.     and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea,even there your hand shall lead me,     and your right hand shall hold me.If I say, “Surely the darkness shall cover me,     and the light about me be night,”even the darkness is not dark to you;     the night is bright as the day,     for darkness is as light with you. (Psalm 139:7–12)

Great Shepherd, when darkness has covered me, and I have lost sight of you; when I can’t discern your presence, and your voice seems like a distant echo; when a spiritual storm overtakes me, and I become disoriented and confused, remind me that saints through the ages have also endured such experiences. Remind me that even my darkness is not dark to you. And reveal yourself — not only to me, but also to my brothers and sisters — as the Shepherd who never loses a sheep (Luke 15:4), even in the valley of the shadow (Psalm 23:4). Even there, let your hand lead me until the storm passes and “light dawns in the darkness” (Psalm 112:4).